Measure your day. It might surprise you.

Which daily tasks are important?

We all have a routine. Whether it is checking email, talking to office mates over morning coffee, or going to the gym, we organize our lives into a series of rituals to make sense of things. And which of these things are not very important?

I talk to customers frequently and would love more feedback in whether they find our conversations useful. Yet many of the most satisfied customers never tell us.

Try Something New.

The easiest way to find out whether something is important is to stop doing it and see if you (or anyone else) notices. If you get into the habit of asking yourself to evaluate your everyday routine and picking one thing every week to change or stop, you’ll have 52 chances every year to effect change.

In the case of customer contacts, it’s hard to know whether building a habit with any single customer is effective because they don’t contact you that often. Looking at the results across a cohort of customers will give you a better view into whether a habit – like calling the customer after every first interaction – drives results against bottom line metrics like The overall customer satisfaction rate.

Change isn’t only stopping things, of course. You can also start doing things. This one’s often a bit trickier to measure, because you don’t know whether you are starting a recurring habit or just doing a one-time task. So take a quick swag: how will you know when the task is done, and what’s the output you are hoping to achieve? If it works, do it again. Eventually, it will become a habit.

Finding other people who care about customers and talking to them is an important habit for me. Please reach out and say hello!